Jersey City to Showcase Its Newest Community Gardens with the 2012 Adopt-A-Lot Garden Tour

JERSEY CITY – Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy , the Division of City Planning in partnership with several community organizations are hosting the 2012 “Growing Together”: Adopt-A-Lot Community Garden Tour from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 25, 2012.

The shuttle bus will be leaving the Bright Street Community Garden, located on Bright and Grove Sts., at 10:00 a.m. for the tour. Pre-registration is encouraged as seats are limited. To register, please call Ivan Freire at 201-547-4513 or email freirei@jcnj.org

This year’s tour will meet at 10 am at Bright Street Community Garden between Bright St and Grove St. The tour will include the following:

The garden tour concludes the 2012 “Growing Together” Adopt-A-Lot Community Garden Program, which provides City-owned vacant land for residents to build community gardens on, and it provides programming and material support to existing community gardens.

The program kicked-off with the 2012 “Growing Together” Adopt-A-Lot Garden Competition. The award ceremony was held on August 22, 2012 at Hamilton Park. Last year, there were a handful of individuals who submitted garden entries. This year, there was an overwhelming response and there were almost 40 gardens submitted, plus the community gardeners who participated.

“All the gardens involved in the competition are winners,” said Mayor Healy. “These gardens continue to beautify Jersey City and make it a greener place to live. I am grateful for the gardeners and communities who came together in this great effort to make Adopt-A-Lot a success.”

The following are the winners of the community garden categories:

Most Sustainable Garden : Blossoming Ivy Community Garden

Best Vegetable Garden : Clinton Avenue Community Garden

Most Artistic Garden : Lafayette Community Garden

Best Park Garden : Washington Park Learning Garden

Best School Garden : Learning Community Charter School

Best Community Involvement Garden (tie) : Project GREAT Community Garden and The Bright Street Community Garden

The Donald Kummerfeld award is dedicated to one of the pioneers in community gardening in Jersey City and will be presented each year to someone who is carrying the torch in either community gardening, park preservation or otherwise outstanding volunteer gardening/greening. This year, the award went to Jan Nordland, an active member of the Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association who spends countless hours beautifying that park, Enos Jones Park and parks and gardens throughout the city.

Photos from the award ceremony, including the winning gardens are available on